I am not a science-fiction writer. Sometimes I dabble in science to push my story forward (such as my novella from Women of the Apocalypse, where my fictional deep-earth headquarters was modeled after the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory), but for the most part, I let the science guys write the science fiction.
Anyhow, I took up the challenge to submit a story for Blood & Water, an anthology from Bundoran Press and edited by Hayden Trenholm (two-time Aurora winner). As they put it:
Blood and Water will gather the stories of the new resource wars that will mark the next fifty years – stories of conflict and cooperation, of hope and despair – all told from a uniquely Canadian perspective. Conflicts with America over Canada’s resources, Canadian solutions to global problems or personal narratives of coping with change and conflict could all inspire your stories.
So I took to the internets to try to get an idea of what the next 50 years are going to look like. I happened upon a collections of essays called (geez, can you guess?): The Way We Will Be 50 Years from Today. This is an interesting collection, and while it’s only one source, it made me start to wonder about a few things.
- Global warming: if the earth warms 2 degrees, that still means that majority of Antarctica will still be -37 and therefore, the caps won’t melt. The world’s water will rise 12-20 inches (so no waterworld)
- Organic food is wonderful in theory but it’s a first-world issue. Without chemical and genetic treatments, there is only enough food for 4 billion people. There are 7 billion people on the planet. You do the math
- Many diseases that we assume are random (though genetically predisposed) are actually caught from our household pets. Oddly, a day after reading this essay, I ran across a story in the Toronto Star that linked Schizophrenia with cats (and oddly, with bad driving).
Again, I don’t know which camp these people belong to. For all I know, they are lobbyists for big government, big oil, big this, or big that — but what it showed me (and though it may seem obvious) is that I don’t know the full story. I assume recycling is better, but why do I? I assume that Global Warming is caused by man, but I’ve never actually looked at the research. I make many assumptions.
I could also tell you that when writing this story, I baked a batch of cookies, did laundry, touched up that wall, and generally did everything BUT write the story. But I’m sure you’ve already made that assumption.